Windows 10: How to upgrade a Native booted VHDX running Windows 11 22H2 to 24H2 with Hyper-V?

I was wondering if I could upgrade my native booted Windows 11, version 22H2 to the newest build, version 24H2 with Hyper-V because according to TenForums, "Notice that you can update Windows on the natively booted VHD normally, install software, do everything else but you cannot upgrade it to next builds. When / if you want to upgrade, boot to your original host OS, run the VM in Hyper-V and upgrade. When done you can again boot to it using the method told in this tutorial." I have tried adding the virtual hard drive to a new Gen 2 Hyper-V virtual machine but when I boot it up, it tells me th

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Reusing vhdx (native boot) in Hyper-V

Hey all,

I created a .vhdx in disk management, initialised, new volume and formatted.

Deployed Win 10 Insider 17754 to it using dism /apply-image etc. Updated the bcd store on main OS, booted to .vhdx natively no issues.

Now since MSoft doesn't allow the upgrade to newer builds for vhd's I wanted to attach the .vhdx to a virtual machine in Hyper-V (on my main install obviously) and then perform the upgrade process.

Tried creating a gen 2 machine, attached the .vhdx, didn't boot. Tried attaching an .iso of the Win10 install also, still didn't boot.

Created a gen 1 machine, with both .vhdx and .iso attached, it booted from the .iso but said no disk drive was detected/installed.

I tried using the repair computer option, setup couldn't repair it, so loaded up command prompt used diskpart, it picked up the drive, marked the current partition active, and tried to manually enter the following commands:

bootrec /fixmbr (successful)
bootrec /fixboot (fail) said something like access denied
bootrec /rebuildbcd (success)

Restarted the VM in Hyper-V still not booting from the attached .vhdx nor did the install from .iso detect the drive either.

Any suggestions as to how I can boot from the vhdx and upgrade the windows installation to build 17760 and then reuse the same .vhdx to boot natively?

Regards

 

Reusing vhdx (native boot) in Hyper-V

Hello Kari,
I did looked at your tutorial “Native boot Virtual Hard Disk - How to upgrade Windows” on tenforums wich is very interesting as I have been stuck with this issue but I couldn’t make it work.
I tried both methods with on both the same issue.
The issue seems to be that my vhdx disk is a GPT which boots fine natively but here when I try it doesn’t boot at all as a non UEFI file system.
I then tried to create a EFI partition which allowed me to boot normally on hyper-v but without being able to update as seen as virtual like when I boot normally without hyper-v.
I converted then my vhdx to MBR but then I got a black screen when launching with a constant CPU at 4%. So no way to boot even MBR with hyper-v.
Now I’m really stuck. If you have any ideas of what I could try it’s more than welcome as I use my vhdx as a real computer so not easy to reinstall from scratch.
Best Regards
Greg

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I finally converted my vhdx to MBR but then I got a blinking cursor when launching and got stuck whatever I tried in cmd line.
So I created a new fat32 partition with boot records and I managed to boot on hyper-v.




But it seems this way didn’t trick windows update and I got stuck again.



If you have any ideas of what I could try it’s more than welcome

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I read that you use this method to get insider preview builds installed. Could the fact i'm trying to install the latest official iso version from MediaCreationTool1909.exe be the problem here ?

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Finally I got it working. The final touch was to change PortableOperatingSystem to 0 in regedit to allow installation.

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In fact I said it too fast and got a new error !!!

 

How to boot into bootable differencing vhdx in Hyper-V

Hello,

I am trying to upgrade my boot to VHD VHDX to the latest Windows 10 update using this terrific tutorial from @Kari: Native boot Virtual Hard Disk - How to upgrade Windows

However, I am having trouble getting the vhdx to boot in Hyper-V. Everything seems to work as expected, but when I get to step 1.18, Hyper-V gives a "The boot loader did not load an operating system" error booting off the VHDX.

I wonder if the boot files are getting created appropriately. When I run

c:\windows\system32\bcdboot c:\windows /s c:

it says it worked correctly, but if I run

bcdedit /v

after that, it says "The boot configuration data store could not be opened. The requested system device cannot be found."

The c: drive is available via the windows installation command prompt.

Other possibly useful information:
- The VHDX is a differencing disk, and the parent VHDX file is read-only
- The VHDX was created in Windows and initialized for Windows install using DISM. It was not created in Hyper-V.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.